But You Never
by Estheim
Summary: Foolishness made him turn back. Courage got him to move onward.


**Disclaimer:** _Final Fantasy IX_ is the property of Square-Enix.

**But You Never**  
by Josie

Foolishness. He'd known it was foolishness that made him turn back, especially to turn back alone. But wasn't that what Steiner had always said about him in the first place? He was too brash and jumped in without thinking everything through.

What a mess he'd made of it this time.

There wasn't anything that he could have possibly done differently, though, just as there was nothing he could have possibly done to save him. His ... brother. It was strange, thinking of him that way after having viewed him as an enemy, but it was the truth, nonetheless. And maybe it was a strange sort of sibling rivalry that spawned their fight in the first place, or maybe it was just that Kuja had brought the entire thing down onto himself by abandoning him on Gaia in the first place.

_No._ He shook his head, hands resting on his knees as he heaved a deep sigh and glanced over to his side, where his brother lay, lifeless now. _It was never fate at all. Fate had no hand in our lives. How could it?_

Fate had no place in the life of a manufactured being. They'd been putty in Garland's hands from their births; if he didn't know any better, he'd almost say that his brother's actions were all planned by the man in the first place. But maybe that was just residual from his time on Terra. His short time there, a time that he would rather forget, even if it meant forgetting who he was all over again.

He still wasn't sure if his allies - friends? Well, he'd like to think they were friends, at least, although he wasn't _positive_ anymore of if he even knew what the word really meant - had understood. They'd let him go after he'd stated his case, of course, but wasn't that just because he was too thick-headed to let them stop him? He'd made up his mind and wouldn't be talked out of it, just like always. And, just like he himself had done before, they'd insisted on going with him. But he'd done exactly what he'd chastised others for doing in the past. Amarant was right. He was a hypocrite in every sense of the word. He'd been a tool of destruction, created as an angel of death to the people of Gaia, and yet he'd fought for their salvation. He'd dealt the deathblow of his own brother, his sworn enemy, and yet turned back to try to save him.

And, true to form, like everything else he had been involved with recently, he'd botched that up somehow. _When did that start, anyway? With her? Or had it been like this from before I ever even considered the idea of kidnapping a princess?_ He shook his head again, glancing at the body of his brother once again. _Kuja ... was I wrong to come back for you? You told me I was a fool for it, didn't you? But you smiled, too. You were happy that I had come back for you, that someone had cared enough to not want you to die. That's all you wanted, wasn't it? You didn't want to die; we're all scared of it._

That was all there was to it: death was a frightening prospect, and even though he'd fought it tooth and nail, even though he'd battled against oblivion and won, he'd made no progress at all. _We were never meant to exist._

The irony was that he'd managed to make it back to the roots of the Iifa Tree alive in the first place; he'd barely gotten a scratch, even. Watching Kuja again, he smiled.

Somewhere in Lindblum, he knew, it was getting late. Really, it was probably the middle of the night already. It certainly felt like it was that time of night where he would head out with Tantalus and get into any amount of trouble. Hadn't there been that one time that he and Blank had gotten captured and thrown into the cells below Lindblum's castle? 3:28 am, the clock had read, when he'd managed to weasel his way out of the cell before unlocking the door for Blank. Really, locking down a thief was harder than the guards must have expected; he almost wished he'd seen their faces when they discovered their captives missing in the morning.

Frowning, he glanced up. Capsized trees and covered ground, unfortunately, were much less forgiving than prison bars. Especially _giant_ capsized trees.

"You didn't give up, did you?" he asked, knowing that he wouldn't get an answer; there was no one who _could_ answer him, after all. "Even when you had lost everything, you helped the same people who you had been ready to kill just so that you could live on. And then there's me, ready to throw it in because there's just no way out anymore. You were right, though. I'm an idiot for coming back for you." He reached out, fingers brushing through silver hair, pushing Kuja's bangs back from his face. "But I couldn't leave you here alone, either. You needed to know that you're not alone, at least once."

He laughed. "I never thought I'd find anything that would ever be able to hold me in. I guess I fancied myself too much of a great escape artist and never really saw just how deep I could really get myself.

"I never thought about things before the way I do now; I guess I have to thank you for that. I always wanted to know what my family was like, even if I did make do with the one I found here. But, if you had never showed back up in my life, I would have kept going on the way I was, wouldn't I? And, as great as it was - and, don't get me wrong, things really were great - I don't think it would have been right to go on _without_ knowing, either. So ... thanks. I just wish I could have told you that in person."

He wasn't really sure who he was thanking, of course. It could have been Kuja, or it could have been Dagger, or Vivi, or any of them. Everyone he had come into contact with, from the instant he'd run into the princess to the instant he had run back into the Iifa Tree's roots, had made him completely change the way he thought about everything in his life. And now ...? Now he wouldn't be able to tell them that, ever again. He never got the chance to, in the first place.

_But you didn't give up. You never did, did you?_ Something about Kuja's sacrifice made him pause. This was a man who hadn't ever even considered the thought of helping his allies before; a man who had always executed the role he had been told to, acting out his place as an angel of death. He'd been almost happy to. Perhaps it was the closest he could get to fulfillment in his life. In a way, there wasn't much else for him to look forward to, after all; the other genomes had been unable to speak, excepting Mikoto, so there wasn't much to look forward to there. And wasn't it just nature for anyone to want to overcome those that he was told he was stronger than? He couldn't really blame Kuja for that; everyone did it. And, besides, this was his brother, wasn't it? The family he'd looked for his entire life.

Not that he had been the greatest role model or anything. But he'd done something that was just enough, at least. He'd shown just how much determination anyone could have when on his last legs.

_That's right,_ he thought. _I never used to give up this easily, so why am I now? Sure, I might not be the world's greatest escape artist, but who is? And, if I don't at least try ..._ He glanced at Kuja's still face again. _If I don't at least try, then doesn't it mean that everything he did to try to make sure that I got out of here safely for nothing? He wanted to make sure that we all got away from this tree alive, and here I am, about to throw it away._

Standing, he dusted off his hands on his knees before taking a step up on one of the roots, not looking back. His hand clenched around something hidden in his pocket; it wasn't worth much monetarily, of course, but it was the first thing he'd ever been given. A simple pocket watch from the surrogate father who had taken him in, handed to him as he left on a journey to find his homeland so that he would always know when it was when he was far from home.

So what if the ground had closed in, and the roots didn't leave much in the way of an escape path? He'd gotten out of worse, hadn't he? He'd traversed to another world in a vessel that broke apart, freefalling into what could have been a void, and he'd still made it. He'd stood against the one enemy that no one would ever want to, and he'd survived. Sure, he'd had people standing with him for that, but they couldn't always be there to bail him out. Besides, that they weren't with him meant that they were waiting for him somewhere, waiting for him to come back home. How could he let them down?

He picked his way carefully towards the surface, still not daring to look behind himself. There was only one way to go, and that was up, until he could manage to break up above ground. And then he'd head back home: to Tantalus, to his friends ... to Dagger.

_You gave us the courage we needed,_ he thought as he continued to climb. _Maybe I was just a simple thief, but because of you, I can manage to go on. Thank you for showing me._ His hand slipped, and he almost tumbled backwards, but managed to catch himself through wrapping his tail on one of the roots behind him so that he could balance himself and get his footing gain. Up he went, knowing now that he had to keep going, for the sake of everyone he had known, as well as for the sake of his departed brother. _You saved us. You saved me. Even though I was the one person you hated the most. That's why I came back for you; that's why I couldn't let you die alone. You were exactly what I could have been; I would have done it, too. No one knows it, but I almost did._

One hand broke out into the nighttime air, through a small opening between branches and roots caved in upon themselves. He hissed in a breath, clasping onto the small ledge before grasping another nearby with his other hand. He pulled himself up, twisting so that he had pressed his feet against the wreckage blocking his way out, pushing with all of his might, but it wouldn't budge; all of that, for nothing.

_'You are not alone.'_ Wasn't that what they had told him before, when he'd been about to give up on Terra? Everyone had come to show him that he wasn't alone, and even if they weren't there physically, he still had them somewhere inside of himself. And wasn't that what he'd learned in Memoria? That their memories were all shared in a greater pool? If memories were shared, then their strengths could be, as well. He pushed again, this time managing to break the branches above himself as he vaulted up out of the ground and landed in a heap a little ways away from the hole - barely perceptible though it was along the great expanse that he found himself in - he'd managed to make. The first step on the road home. He lay there for a moment, staring up at the stars before standing again, dusting himself off once more. He certainly wasn't defeated; he had somewhere to go to now, and a reason to get there. He had to go home, to everyone. Something felt warm as he even considered that, but he turned back to the wreckage once again even as the thought remained on his mind. He didn't _want_ to leave Kuja behind, but he also knew that this was likely the best resting place for him. Besides, he'd given him what he needed: that last bit of courage necessary to pull himself out and return home. Still, he stood his ground.

"I won't let your memory die," Zidane said softly, blue eyes transfixed on the collapsed ground where there had once stood an enormous tree revered as the bringer of life. "You'll live on inside of me; I'm going to live for you, Kuja, just like you wanted me to. And I'm going to make it home again; even if I don't know how just yet, I'll do it. It's never stopped me before, right?"

And he never knew it, as he stood there in the darkness, but if he had bothered to look at the pocket watch that Baku had given so much time before, he'd have found that it showed him that the time back home in Lindblum was 3:28. Just like that night, escaping with Blank from the dungeons, all of those years ago.


End file.
